J had a sudden superstitious dread that he would not see his father again. The loss of his mother and then his wife had shaken his confidence. ‘Don’t work too hard,’ he urged him. ‘Leave it to me to repair our fortunes. I shall bring back barrels full of plants in time for the spring. I swear it.’ He gazed into his father’s face. The old man looked as he had always done, dark-eyed, weather-beaten, hardy as a clump of heather.

‘God bless,’ J whispered and then went up the gangplank of the ship.

John sat on a barrel on the quayside, stretching his tired legs before him, and waited for the ship to sail. He watched them run the gangplank aboard and then throw the mooring ropes. The little barges came out and took her in tow out to the middle of the river, and then John heard the faint shouted order and saw the lovely sight of the sails being flung open to the wind.

John raised his hand to his son as the ship caught the wind, slewed a little in the current, corrected her course, and then slipped away downriver, ploughing through the busy traffic of outbound boats and cross-river wherries, fishermen, and rowing boats.

From his place at the railing, J saw the figure of his father grow smaller and smaller as the quay itself shrank and became part of a larger view, an outcrop of stone against the green of the Kent hills behind it, then as they were further and further out, the dock was nothing but a darker line on the blur of the shadowy land.

‘Goodbye,’ he said quietly. ‘God bless.’ It seemed to him that he was leaving not just his father and his children and the memories of his wife and mother, but as if he was leaving his own childhood and his long apprenticeship, and going to a new life which he could make his own.

Spring 1638

John did not neglect the garden at Oatlands while J was away. He had planted a new consignment of daffodils in the autumn and that spring he was in the king’s court every day, watching the green spears break through the soil. For the queen he had planted tulips in great china bowls, and forced them to bloom early. They might be worth a fraction of their original value but John would not throw good bulbs on the midden because they had once been worth a fortune and were now sold for shillings. He had bought them for love of their colour and shape and he loved them still. He put them in the orangery by the windows for the light and kept them warm. Their Majesties were due at the palace in late February and John wanted the bulbs in flower for their private apartments.